In this Edition:Legal Reform: Illegal Aliens Sue Employers for Offering
Illegal WorkTort Du Jour: An Insult to Donkeys EverywhereTestimony: Americans Pay More for Lawsuits Than for Drugs

Illegal Aliens Sue Employers for Offering Illegal Work

In America, the word "success" seems to be inscribed
indelibly on the national consciousness -- the consciousness,
that is, of everyone except a typical federal bureaucrat.

It happened in the Clinton Administration
in the late 1990s, midway through the high-tech boom that appeared
to be forging a permanent prosperity. Some bright lights in the
Justice Department's Anti-Trust Division decided that Microsoft
was being anti-competitive by being, well, over-competitive.
The resulting costly and time-consuming lawsuit arguably was
the first pinprick to penetrate the high-tech bubble.

Now the Bush Administration's law enforcers
seem to be repeating their predecessors' mistake. Federal immigration
authorities recently swooped on 61 Wal-Mart stores to arrest
251 illegal immigrants working as night janitors for outside
contractors hired by the retailing giant.

Wal-Mart stands accused of knowingly
hiring subcontractors that used illegal workers to cut costs.
It now also is being sued by nine employees of the subcontractors
-- illegal aliens all -- for allegedly not following labor laws.

If some of Wal-Mart's subcontractors
are guilty, and Wal-Mart genuinely knew and approved, one wonders
why the company, which has over 1 million employees, didn't resort
to this money-saving practice at all 2,864 of its U.S. stores.
Slightly reduced pay for 251 employees at 61 stores would have
been but a drop in the bucket for Wal-Mart.

One also wonders at the chutzpah of an
illegal alien who can sue someone else for indirectly providing
him with illegal employment he willingly took. If these illegals
can sue Wal-Mart for hiring the firms that illegally hired them,
should not Wal-Mart be able to sue them for taking the illegal
work in the first place?

Wal-Mart, simply put, is a target because
it is successful.

The company already is under fire by
the United Commercial Food Workers union and its left-wing allies
because Wal-Mart is opening super supermarkets around the country
and Wal-Mart employees are rejecting unionization attempts by
the UCFW.

So the union and its media allies are
charging Wal-Mart with anti-social activities from allegedly
selling goods produced in foreign sweatshops to driving unionized
competitors out of business by paying lower wages.

Wal-Mart, however, buys overwhelmingly American and demands that
its foreign suppliers subscribe to fair labor standards. Moreover,
its wages and benefits, on average, are as good, and sometimes
better, than are those of its unionized rivals.

Wal-Mart has long been the bogeyman of
the left because it is big and successful.

When Wal-Mart locates on the fringe area
of a small town, so the myth goes, its sucks the lifeblood from
all the local merchants on Main Street, but the Interstate Highway
System and ubiquitous parking meters, both put into place in
the 1950s, probably are far more responsible for Main Street's
demise.

The Interstate allowed shoppers to take advantage of economies
of scale at big shopping centers long before Wal-Mart arrived.
Coin-gobbling parking meters helped accelerate that trend. Economic
data, in fact, show Wal-Mart has been a net plus in the areas
where it locates.

Darwinian as it sounds, the capitalistic
system is not cruel -- just efficient. If your business happens
to get run over by a better idea, the best response is simply
to pick yourself up and find some way to profit from the change.
Or, better yet, develop an even better idea yourself.

Americans will only maintain world leadership if enough of us
to do just that. Whining about victimhood may be music to the
ears of pandering politicians, but it is drowned out by the chaos
of a fiercely competitive global marketplace.

The fact is that Sam Walton had a remarkably
better retailing idea five decades ago in Bentonville, Arkansas,
and that his successors have managed to refine and polish it
along the way.

Wal-Mart's sales juggernaut helped dull the pain of the past
recession. It provides everyday America with affordable goods.
And the smiling faces of its often-elderly greeters are far better
than the surly countenances one often encounters at the post
office or many a unionized checkout counter.

Yet, Wal-Mart will only remain a success
as long as it provides a product that a majority of consumers
want. Eventually either it will adopt policies that betray its
current formula for success or someone else will come along with
an even better idea.

Until that happens, it is far better for America if shoppers
are driven by their own desires and perceptions of good deals
rather than by someone else's ideology of resentment.

-by Amy Ridenour

An Insult to Donkeys
Everywhere

Bob Craft of Hot Springs, Montana, changed
his name to Jack Ass as part of a strategy, he says, of raising
awareness of the dangers of driving while intoxicated.

But when MTV created a TV show and movie
called "Jackass," Craft concluded that MTV's creation
caused "injury to a reputation I have built and defamation
of character I have created," and sought $10 million in
damages.

Question: If you name yourself "Jack
Ass," what's left of your reputation to damage?

"An April 2002 study prepared by
the White House Council of Economic Advisers determined that
the U.S. has the most expensive tort system in the world, consuming
1.8% of GDP. At $636 per capita, it's more than twice the average
percentage of other industrialized nations.

Put another way, the $179 billion the
nation spent in 2000 on direct costs for insurance administration,
attorneys, witnesses, and awards to victims under the American
tort adjudication system equals 150% of the amount Americans
spent on pharmaceuticals."